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One of the Town of Peace River?s pioneers was a man, who lent his name to a creek running through the town and to an area northeast of town. Although details of Pat Wesley?s life are obscure, it is plain to see the man who was in the area from at least 1902, indeed, was an important person in the history of the town.

An Evelyn Seeley poem lauds Wesley for whom Pat?s Creek and the district of Wesley Creek are named. The creek flows west between Kaufman and Grouard hills though the town of Peace River into the Peace River at Riverfront Park, behind the Third Mission?s Heritage Suites.

In her poem, Seeley says:

" To Pat Wesley, man of the church,

My name I share,

To old country folks, southern neighbours alike

Land to prepare

Wood for fires, shacks and barn

Stinted food for man and mare.

Oh! Wesley Creek land of grey wooded soil

My name I do declare.

The district?s respect for an

Early pioneer."

Wesley was Metis. "He was one of the Metis who took scrip ? that is the title to certain areas of land," writes Muriel Oslie in Peace River Remembers. According to Oslie, he moved onto his land and lived in a cabin near Pat?s Creek, as it came to be known. He gave five acres to the Anglican Church, asking only that his body be laid to rest in the shadow of the church to be built on the land he had donated. (from Place Names of Alberta, Vol. IV)

In 1910, Wesley contracted smallpox, the disease, which eventually killed him. He was buried, as requested, in what is now the rectory garden.

The son of Rev. Robert Holmes, who was in charge of the Anglican Mission on what is now the Shaftesbury Trail, also succumbed to the disease, presumably, through contact with his mother, Jessie, who nursed Wesley throughout his illness.

Three of the five acres Wesley donated were sold. The funds from the sale were used in 1916, for the erection of a house on ground near Pat Wesley?s grave for the Incumbent of St. James Church, Rev. Harold Hesketh. (from I Remember).

Current buildings on the property include: rectory, Synod office, St. James Cathedral, and Athabasca Hall.

Pat?s Creek is the source of many town of Peace River tales, from floods to slumpage to a laden runaway tanker truck, which scorched the upper portion on Main Street.

Highway 2 used to follow Pat?s Creek into town. Now, the abandoned former eastern route into town is a three-kilometres wilderness interpretive trail above the creek, under the stewardship of Northern Sunrise County. As it says on the county?s Web site ? the area is "characterized by massive slumpage sites where the old highway simply has slid in big chunks down the valley (between Kaufman and Grouard hills)."

Over the early years, it was not uncommon for the creek to flood and cause concern in the downtown portion of the community. Although in 1962, it was credited with saving the very area it had been known to flood.

One of the most spectacular events involving Pat?s Creek and the roadway, was on a Sunday evening in 1962 (Sept. 30), when the brakes failed on the tanker truck trailer carrying 42,000 gallons of aviation fuel causing it to careen at 65-75 miles an hour down the slope into the north end of Peace River?s Main Street.

According to a 2002 account in the Record-Gazette, in which the newspaper interviewed the driver of the vehicle Charlie Samms, the tanker jackknifed on a light pole and spewed thousands of gallons of fuel, "torching one building after the next as it flowed down the street." Approximately 30 people were quickly forced to evacuate their upper-level apartments. "Pat?s Creek, at one point a sheet of flame itself, was credited with halting the fiery fuel from travelling further into the downtown core.

"Miraculously, no one was killed. Equally incredible, a dazed 28-year-old Samms walked away from the blazing wreck of the tanker."